there was no lack of interesting things to do that first day at the ranch. there was one half-hour, to be sure, when five of the happy hexagons sat a little quietly on the front gallery and tried to talk as if there were no such thing as a windmill, and no such person as a girl who could climb to the top of it; but after genevieve and mrs. kennedy, arm in arm, came through the front door—with eyes indeed, a little misty, but with lips cheerfully smiling—every vestige of constraint fled. genevieve, once more in her pretty linen frock, was again the alert little hostess, and very soon they were all off to inspect the flower garden, the vegetable garden, the cow corral, the sheds, the stables, and the blacksmith's shop, not forgetting teresa, the cook, who was making tamales in the kitchen for them, nor pepito, genevieve's own horse that she rode before she went east.
"and we'll have the boys pick out some horses for you, too," cried genevieve, smoothing pepito's sleek coat in response to his welcoming whinny of delight. "i'm sure they can find something all right for us."
tilly's eyes brightened, so, too, did bertha's; but cordelia spoke hastily, her eyes bent a bit distrustfully on the spirited little horse genevieve was petting.
"oh, but i don't believe they'll have time to hunt up horses for us, genevieve. really, i don't think we ought to ask them to."
"maybe we won't, then—for you," teased tilly, saucily. "we'll just let them take time for ours."
it is a question, however, if that afternoon, even tilly wanted to ride; for, according to cordelia's notes that night in "things to do," they saw a broncho "bursted."
it was mr. tim who had said at the dinner table that noon:
"if you young people happen to be on hand, say at about four o'clock, you'll see something doing. reddy's got a horse or two he's going to put through their paces—and one of 'em's never been saddled."
privately, to mr. hartley, mrs. kennedy objected a little.
"are you sure, mr. hartley, the girls ought to witness such a sight?" she asked uneasily. "of course i don't want to be too strict in my demands," she went on with a little twinkle in her eyes that mr. hartley thoroughly understood. "i realize the west isn't the east. but, will this be—all right?"
"i think it will—even in your judgment," he assured her. "it's no professional broncho-buster that they'll see to-day. i seldom hire them, anyway, as i prefer to have our own men break in the horses—specially as we're lucky enough to have three or four mighty skillful ones right in our own outfit. there'll be nothing brutal or rough to-day, mrs. kennedy. only one beast is entirely wild, and he's not really vicious, reddy says. genevieve tells me the girls have heard a lot about broncho-busting, and that they're wild to see it. they wouldn't think they'd been to texas, i'm afraid, if they didn't see something of the sort."
"very well," agreed mrs. kennedy, with visible reluctance.
"oh, of course," went on mr. hartley, his eyes twinkling, "you mustn't expect that they'll see exactly a pony parade drawing baby carriages down beacon street; but they will see some of the best horsemanship that the state of texas can show. i take it you never saw a little beast whose chief aim in life was to get clear of his rider—eh, mrs. kennedy?"
"no, i never did," shuddered the lady; "and i'm not sure that i'd want to," she finished decisively, as she turned away.
the new horse proved to be a fiery little bay mustang, and the fight began from the first moment that the noose settled about his untamed little neck. as tilly told of the affair in the chronicles of the hexagon club, it was like this:
"we saw a broncho busted this afternoon. reddy busted it, and he was splendid. mercy! i shall never think anything my old beauty does is bad again. beauty is a snail and a saint beside this jumping, plunging, squealing creature that never by any chance was on his feet properly—except when he came down hard on all four of them at once with his back humped right up in the middle in a perfectly frightful fashion—and i suppose that wasn't 'properly.' anyhow, i shouldn't have thought it was, if i had had to try to sit on that hump!
"but that wasn't the only thing that he did. dear me, no! he danced, and rolled, and seesawed up and down—'pitching,' mr. hartley called it. and i'm sure it looked like it. first he'd try standing on his two fore feet, then he'd give them a rest, and take the other two. and sometimes he couldn't seem to make up his mind which he wanted to use, or which way he wanted to turn, and he'd change about right up in the air so he'd come down facing the other way. my, he was the most uncertain creature!
"it didn't seem to make a mite of difference where the horse was, or what he did with his feet, though. reddy was right there every time, and all[114] ready, too. (yes, i know a pun is the lowest order of wit. but i don't care. i couldn't help it, anyway—it was such a ready one!) there he sat, so loose and easy, too, with his quirt (that's a whip), and it looked sometimes just as if he wasn't half trying—that he didn't need to. but i'm sure he was trying. anyhow, i know i couldn't have stayed on that horse five minutes; and i don't believe even genevieve could. (i said that to mr. tim nolan, and he laughed so hard i thought i'd put it in here, and let somebody else laugh.)
"of course every one of us was awfully excited, and the boys kept shouting and cheering, and yelling 'stay with him!' and telling him not to 'go to leather'—whatever that may mean! and reddy did stay. he stayed till the little horse got tired out; then he got off, and led the horse away, and some of the other boys went through a good deal the same sort of thing with other horses, only these had all been partly broken before, they told us. but, mercy, they were bad enough, anyhow, i thought, to have been brand-new. reddy did another one, too, and this time he put silver half-dollars under his feet in the stirrups: and when the little beast—the horse, i mean, not reddy—got through his antics, there the half-dollars were, still there in the same old place. how the boys did yell and cheer then!
"after that, they all just 'showed off' for us, throwing their ropes over anything and everything, and playing like a crowd of little boys on a picnic, only mr. hartley said they were doing some 'mighty fine roping' with it all. their ropes are mostly about forty feet long, and it looked as if they just slung them any old way; but i know they don't, for afterward, just before we went in to supper, reddy let me take his rope, and i tried to throw it. i aimed for a post a little way ahead of me, but i got pedro, the mexican cowboy, behind me, right 'in the neck,' as mr. tim said. pedro grinned, and of course everybody else laughed horribly.
"and thus endeth the account of how the bronchos were busted. (p.s. i hope whoever reads the above will own up that for once tilly mack got some sense into her part. so there!) i forgot to say we took a nap after dinner. everybody does here. 'siestas' they call them, genevieve says."
it was after supper that genevieve said:
"now let's go out on to the front gallery and watch the sunset. supper was too late last night for us to see much of it, but to-night it will be fine—and you've no idea what a sunset really can be until you've seen it on the prairie!"
tilly pursed her lips.
"there, genevieve hartley, there's another of those mysterious words of yours; and it isn't the first time i've heard it here, either."
"what word?"
"'gallery.' what is a gallery? i'm sure i don't see what there can be about a one-story house to be called a 'gallery'!"
genevieve laughed.
"you call them 'verandas' or 'piazzas,' back east, tilly. we call them 'galleries' in texas."
"oh, is that it?" frowned tilly. "but you never called sunbridge piazzas that."
genevieve shook her head.
"no; it's only when i get back here that the old names come back to me so naturally. besides—when i was east, i very soon found out what you called them; so i called them that, too."
"well, anyhow," retorted tilly, saucily, "i've got my opinion of folks that will call a one-story piazza a 'gallery.' i should just like to show them what we call a 'gallery' at home—say, the top one in the boston theater, you know, where it runs 'way back."
genevieve only laughed good-naturedly.
on the front gallery all settled themselves comfortably to watch the sunset. already the sun was low in the west, a huge ball of fire just ready to drop into the sea of prairie grass.
"it doesn't seem nearly so hot here as i thought it would," observed bertha, after a time. "oh, it's been warm to-day, of course—part of the time awfully warm," she added hastily. "but i've been just as hot in new hampshire."
"we think we've got a mighty fine climate," spoke up mr. hartley. "now, last year, you in the east, had heaps of prostrations from the heat. texas had just three."
"i suppose that was owing to the northers," murmured cordelia, interestedly. "now, feel it!" she put up her hand. "there's a breeze, now. is that a norther?"
mr. hartley coughed suddenly. genevieve stared.
"what do you know about northers?" she demanded.
"why, i—i read about them. it said you—you had them."
genevieve broke into a merry laugh.
"i should think, by the way you put it, that they were the measles or the whooping cough! we do have them, cordelia—in the winter, specially, but not so often in july. besides, they don't feel much like this little breeze—as you'd soon find out, if you happened to be in one."
for a moment there was silence; then genevieve spoke again.
"see here, where'd you find out all these things about texas—that we didn't have butter, and did have northers?"
before cordelia could answer, tilly interposed with a chuckling laugh:
"i'll tell you, genevieve, just where they found out," she cut in, utterly ignoring her own share of the "they." "now, listen! how do you suppose they spent all the time you were in new jersey? i'll tell you. they were digging up texas every single minute; and they dug, and dug, and dug, until there wasn't a mean annual temperature, or a mean anything else that they didn't drag from its hiding-place and hold up triumphantly, and shout: 'behold, this is texas!'"
"girls—you didn't!" cried genevieve, choking with laughter.
"they did!" affirmed tilly.
"yes, we did—including tilly," declared cordelia, with unexpected spirit.
everybody laughed this time, but it was alma, the peacemaker, who spoke next.
"oh, look—look at the sun!" she exclaimed. "aren't those rose-pink clouds gorgeous?"
"my, wouldn't they make a lovely dress?" sighed elsie.
"yes, and see the golden pathway the sun has made, straight down to the prairie," cried bertha brown.
"oh, look, look, mr. hartley! is that grass on fire?" gasped cordelia.
mr. hartley shook his head.
"no—i hope not."
"but you do have prairie fires?"
"sometimes; but not so often nowadays—though i've seen some bad ones, in my time."
there was a long silence. all eyes were turned toward the west. above, a riot of rose and gold and purple flamed across the sky. below, more softly, the colors seemed almost repeated in the waving, shifting, changing expanse of fairylike loveliness that the prairie had become.
"oh, how beautiful it all is, and how i do love it," breathed genevieve, after a time, as if to herself.
gradually the gorgeous rose and gold and purple changed, softened, and faded quite away. the slender crescent of the moon appeared, and one by one the stars showed in the darkening sky.
"it's all so quiet, so wonderfully quiet," sighed cordelia; then, abruptly, she cried: "why, what's that?"
there had sounded a far-away shout, then another, nearer. on the breeze was borne the muffled tread of hundreds of hoofs. a dog began to bark lustily.
later, they swept into view—a troop of cowboys, and a thronging, jostling mass of cattle.
"on the way to a round-up, probably," explained mr. hartley, as he rose to his feet and went to meet the foreman, who was coming toward the house.
still later, he explained more fully.
"they've put them in our pens for the night. the boys have gone into camp a mile or so away."
genevieve shuddered.
"i hate round-ups," she cried passionately.
"what are round-ups?" asked bertha brown.
"where they brand the cattle," answered genevieve, quickly, but in a low voice.
cordelia, who was near her, shuddered. she seemed now to see before her eyes that seething mass of heads and horns, sweeping on and on unceasingly.
cordelia had two dreams that night. she wondered, afterward, which was the worse. she dreamed, first, that an endless stream of cattle climbed the windmill tower and jumped clear to the edge of the prairie, where the sun went down. she dreamed, secondly, that she was very hungry, and that twenty feet away stood a table laden with hot biscuits and fried chicken; but that the only way she could obtain any food was to "rope it" with reddy's lariat. at the time of waking up she had not obtained so much as one biscuit or a chicken wing.
